If you have to travel interstate to the MFAA Conference and pay for accommodation you will blow the whole $2k allowance on one event! What about your own aggregator's conference, webinars and other training? This is dumb policy! MFAA will also have to stand up here or industry events will become a thing of the past. If training costs above $2k are no longer tax deductible does that mean FBT could apply to payments for training on behalf of staff/directors etc?

I am appalled how little the supposed movers and shakers in this industry know. Work related expenses are just that, a deduction available to employees who spend their own money to improve their skills. For a sole trader or company in business ongoing professional development including seminars, conferences etc are a normal business expense if necessarily incurred to produce assessable income and would be fully deductible as such. For the sole trader it is a business expenses deducted in the supplementary section of their tax return for a company a trading expenses deducted in their company tax return. Further if an employee gets approval from their employer to complete some training and a salary sacrifice agreement is reached for part or all of the cost, the employer would be entitled to claim the expenditure without limit as a normal business expense, provided again that they can demonstrate objectively that the expense was necessarily incurred to produce assessable income.

To Broker Tony, MFAA flagged this issue to members in its E-New on 4 July and said they were putting in a submission to Treasury by 12 July, the due date. Talking about it after the event is energy wasted.

In incredibly silly policy but I'm not really that worried about it.The first industry to file legal action against it will be the legal profession, followed shortly by medicine. By the time mortgage brokers get to challenge it there'll be so much precident that any legislationw will have been neutralised.

This is really bad policy suggestions from Treasury . We may be the lucky country and one of the highest taxed and looking to one of the worst educatedv, it is just shameful . If either side of politics were to pass this would be political suicide! PeterT comments are very relevantbbutbthe FBAA and MFAA must lobby hard on this to ensure does not become law .

For the above who have laid claim that I said the diploma is a joke (or the like), I suggest you get your facts straight. I/we strongly support people doing it if they choose (not forced) plus a three or four day course does not make you and expert on lending or anything else so in that area I have concerns. Informed comments are great, ignorance is not.